McCain completely out of touch with Americans and health insurance

Posted by anjali on Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to be specifically partisan in the 2008 presidential elections — it’s a note about how misinformation about health care and health insurance in America should not be tolerated, and how out of touch some of our presidential candidates are regarding this extremely important issue.

Smintheus at dkos shares two articles from the NYTimes and the Des Moines Register talking about how McCain is twisting the Democratic presidential candidates’ health insurance plans. From the NYTimes:

“There are those that want a massive government takeover of the health care system in America,” Mr. McCain warned Thursday in Des Moines, as he made the case for his more market-based approach…

“But before you decide to sign on to that kind of a program, go to Canada, or go to European countries that have government-run health care systems,” he continued. “My friends, they don’t work, they’re inefficient, and they end up in a two-tiered system where the wealthiest can afford to pay for their own health care and those with low income sometimes wait six or eight months for a routine kind of treatment. And that’s what I’m not going to let happen to the United States of America.”

My dear friend McCain:

ALL YOUR LIFE you have relied on the government to provide top-notch insurance to you. When you were a kid, your father was an Admiral and you received health insurance under the military’s plan. When you were in the military you received health insurance through the military, and in your many years in office you have benefitted from the comprehensive health insurance packages that the state and country have provided for you, on the taxpayer dollar (read: McCain has not experienced private insurance, and if he has, it has been for a very short time).

Mccain, if you seethingly hate government-funded health insurance so much, you should have long opted for private insurance yourself.

And please stop twisting the Democratic health insurance plans as “socialized medicine”. That they are not, to the excitement of many, and to the dismay of many others. There is no room for lies in this very important life-and-death issue facing Americans.

I don’t care for your double-talk. Put your money where your mouth is.

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As a primary care doc at a county hospital, where most folks don’t have insurance or have medicaid, it’s a DAILY REALITY for people with painful gallstones have to wait 9-12 months for a cholecystectomy (surgery to remove the gallbladder), or where people with severe debilitating neurological disorders have to wait 9-12 months for a first appointment to see a neurologist.

A few of us who traveled to Seattle and Vancouver in 2004 interviewed folks who were going about their daily business in the downtowns of both cities. OVER AND OVER again, I heard about stories like the Canadian who was traveling in America and who tore his ACL (a ligament in the knee) and went straight back to Canada for surgery that same week ($0 in out-of-pocket costs); the woman who noted a lump in her breast, who called her primary care doc’s office — saw him within 2 days, and saw a breast specialist within a week, and was under chemotherapy treatment within two weeks after a mammogram, all for free; or the man who had a severe headache, took a cab to the emergency room, had a head CT, saw a neurologist, stayed in the hospital for two days, and left with just a $40 cab bill.

There are many things wrong with the health care systems in other countries, i’m not absolving them of all criticism. But it shows how absolutely out of touch McCain and his cronies are for spewing garbage like this. It really does. And this kind of talk actually incenses more and more Americans on a daily basis, as they increasingly face the harsh realities of the american health care system and its tiered healthcare systems.

Apparently, McCain also wants to destroy the employer-based health insurance system and force millions of Americans to buy individual private health insurance plans. Again, while he’ll never make mention of it, all his life McCain has been provided health insurance through government funding and is COMPLETELY out of touch with the realities of purchasing private health insurance through the uncompetitive markets with no bargaining power and great scrutiny of “pre-existing coniditions”.

Again thanks to Smintheus for the link to the editors’ commentary at the Des Moines Register:

The proposal [by McCain] should scare the heck out of the millions of Americans who rely on employer-based coverage…Buying individual policies means having your health history reviewed. It means not having the bargaining power and protections that come with being part of a plan offered by an employer. And it’s expensive…

The senator is correct that the employer-based system of health insurance in this country isn’t working. Businesses are saddled with the high costs of coverage, putting them at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. Insurance shouldn’t be tied to jobs.

But the more reasonable solution is to offer everyone what Medicare already offers: health coverage financed by a combination of tax dollars and participant contributions, thus allowing the huge bargaining power of millions of Americans to leverage down costs.

That idea is nowhere near as radical as forcing millions of Americans to shop for their own coverage in a profit-driven, private-insurance sector.

Now we’re talking. I like the use of the word “radical” in the editorial, contrasting the radical right wing thoughts on health insurance to the more reasonable solutions on the table (and those that a growing number of Americans are embracing).

(cross posted at Cure This)

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